Following the year with the worst storm that the USA has seen in 10 years, 2018 has been marked by hurricanes resulting in apocalyptic damage and thousands of deaths. Whilst 2017’s Hurricane Harvey losses were expected to reach $20 billion, they actually amounted to $125 billion, second only to Hurricane Katrina which amounted to $161 billion and the total costs for 2017 amounting to $306 billion.

Following a relatively calm post-Katrina period, no category 3 storms made landfall on US mainland between 2006-2016. After being hit by four category 4 hurricanes between 2017 and 2018, the last two storm seasons have served as reminders of just how much havoc they can wreak. Hurricane Harvey brought record flooding, Hurricane Irma the record duration of speed, Hurricane Maria was Puerto Rico’s deadliest disaster, Hurricane Florence the wettest storm to hit the Carolinas, and Hurricane Michael the strongest storm to hit Florida Panhandle.

The record ferocity of these hurricanes combined with the apocalyptic damage and thousands of deaths forced increasingly frantic discussions regarding disaster preparedness and climate change. The last few months also delivered painful lessons on a range of related issues such as building regulations helping homes stay upright and dry, residential proximity to a rising ocean and whether the Saffir Simpson wind scale, used to rank the storms’ strengths, is a system in need of an update for assessing overall risk.

Find out more about the effects of this year’s major hurricanes in the USA here.

As wildfires ravage and destroy extensive areas of California, Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E), one of the state’s biggest utilities, has announced that it is facing billions of dollars in potential liability. With the numbers a lot higher than its insurance would cover, the potential losses could expose businesses and consumers to high costs, and could leave the utility facing bankruptcy, something it previously went through in 2001.

Whilst investigators have yet to determine the origin of Camp Fire, the current set of blazes, PG&E disclosed that damage and an outage to a transmission tower had been reported in the area soon after the fire had started. Downed power lines serving California’s utilities have caused many fires recently, with state officials determining that PG&E-owned electrical equipment was responsible for 17 to 21 major fires in Northern California the previous fall.

The total costs for 2017 and 2018 could reach $30 billion ($15 billion for each), a figure that could rise due to Camp Fire only being a third contained. This would make absorbing the expenses difficult for any party and could force the utility to sharply increase rates, with residential customers within the utility’s territory left to be covering the costs.

As planning for the next generation of skyscrapers gets underway, what can we expect from the high-rises of the future? We know that many of these buildings under construction are currently far greener and taller than any to date, with one set to comfortably become the tallest in the world. However, along with these impressive structures comes a recurring curse that follows the super towers’ construction.

The smallest of the new skyscrapers will be the Baoneng Shenyang Global Financial Center in South Korea which will become the ninth tallest in the world. Costing around $1.5 billion, it will feature 114 floors, 34 of which will be offices, a five star hotel and an exclusive club at the top of the tower.

Puncturing the 2,000ft marker will be Rama IX Super Tower of Bangkok in Thailand, which will be the sixth tallest tower in the world. With a cost of $620 million to build, it will have 125 floors which include office space, a shopping centre, a six star hotel and restaurants. The skyscraper will partially be powered with solar panels and will use clad insulated glass.

The third new skyscraper will be Merdeka PNB 118 in Kuala Lumpur, which will become the fourth tallest tower in the world once built, whilst the Wuhan Greenland Center in China will be the fourth tallest. Thornton Tomasetti provided the structural engineering services to the latter, which will feature an energy generating ventilation system that captures exhaust air to use to heat the building and a greywater recovery system that takes used water from the hotel to use in the skyscraper’s evaporative cooling system.

Last but not least will be the highly anticipated Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, to which Thornton Tomasetti is also providing structural engineering services. The future tallest building will be constructed in a Jeddah Economic City amounting to $20 billion. The skyscraper will feature a rotating sky terrace and has been constructed so the facades align from northwest to northeast, reducing the overall solar load.

The curse? History has shown that after a major skyscraper is built, the stock market crashes. The Asian financial crisis followed the completion of the Petronas towers, the Taipei tower’s construction was followed by the dot-com bubble, and the financial crisis of 2007-2009 broke as the Burj Khalifa was being built. Hopefully another financial crisis is not on its way.